Last week, a science teacher who had heard about the knowledge-led, mastery-focused curriculum at Michaela asked me, “do your kids hate Science yet?” On the same day, I attended a ‘knowledge versus skills’ science debate. The skills troops were gathered and I was offered an insight into the ideological battlefield. There was a real sense of dissatisfaction by how little their sevens’ loved Science. The troops seemed to agree that the reason why secondary school science does not inspire young minds is because there are not enough opportunities for discovery, creativity and awe-inspiring practicals.
I agreed that many science departments in secondary schools do not inspire young minds. However, this is because those departments do not have a high enough level of rigour in their curriculum at Key Stage Three. Even their lower ability pupils are not sufficiently challenged.
Quite frankly, science departments around the country patronise children. They do this by trying to get their children to be scientists and think like scientists. Ironically, by trying to treat the pupils like adult scientists, they end up patronising them by turning lessons into ‘playing grown-ups’. Even at Advanced Level, I did not think like a scientist. On starting out, even Aristotle did not think like a scientist. Instead, he was deeply influenced by his teacher, Plato. Aristotle’s work on geology, physics, metaphysics, psychology, biology and medicine were founded on the 20 years that he spent at Plato’s Academy, accumulating masses of knowledge and experience.